Gadget Reviews by Ihab

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There seems to be a skinny trend going on these days and several companies are coming up with their own skins to take on exclusive, eye-catching and high-quality skins. Even smartphone stores are starting creating custom cases, decals, and skins, too.

I have been a huge supporter of DBrand, a simple online store that has some great looking skins for all the latest smartphones and gadgets. I have their skins on almost all my smartphones, and even on my Mac.

Let’s split this review into two parts, what is known, and what is not known!

What is known

Popular brands like DBrand and beautiful. I mean, just look at this Concrete DBrand skin:

They come in all kinds of designs and some websites even customize them for you.

Most of them, if not all now, are precision cut, which means you get very specific cut-outs for logos, buttons, and cameras.

And finally, they look and feel fantastic! The concrete skin has a texture similar to real concrete and with some skins, specifically ones in leather, provide more grip – a great addition to your super slippery shiny new iPhone.

This may sound like a sponsored post, but it is not. Please visit dbrand.com to see their latest skins or google smartphone skins to see all brands, but before you do:

What is not known

Let’s first start with installation and it is fairly simple if your phone is flat or has a slight curve. I have one on my iPhone SE and also had one on my Samsung Note 7, which meant a direct application. DBrand skins, I feel, are a 99% fit, which means that you have 1% or less of wiggle room for the skin to be applied or else it will be visibly not perfect – They usually go edge to edge perfectly and look as though the phone came like that!

But if your phone is curvaceous, installation is going to be hard. If you look at the below video, they make it look simple.

The truth is, applying the back and aligning it with the holes is just as simple as flat skins, but once you have to deal with the curves, it gets complicated. The images on all websites are photoshopped to not show edges and scare people off.

There’s no such thing as an invisible seam and the same applies here. The top of my iPhone 7 has a near perfect installation. Nothing sticks out, no edges, smooth and from 15CM away or more, you would assume the phone is actually concrete but if you take a close look, you can see where the flaps join to form the continuous skin.

Now let’s take a look at a not-so-great-edge. I had a lot of trouble with this one. Over-heating or stretching the skin a bit too much causes overlap, which then results in edges that stick out. These will get caught in things and will peel off. You need A LOT of patience, ensure you are using a hairdryer to soften the glue and not melt the crap out of it, and try to get as close as possible to the edge.

For many people that may look just fine, and from 15CM away it may not be visible, but once it started clinging on my T-Shirt or jeans, I noticed it, and it is an issue. Fortunately, DBrand give you two, one with a camera cut-out and one with it covered (for the iPhone 7) so I will try this again, but I have installed skins on almost all devices, with this similar issue.

The second issue worth mentioning is that skins do not protect your device from bumps, just scratches, which means if you care for your brand new device, you’ll be putting it in a case – which means you’re covering the beautiful skin you bought unless you opt for a clear case. Keep that in mind.

And this pretty much sums it up really. Skin your phone if you’re carrying it in a clear case or naked anyways and be sure you’re ready to apply it very carefully with patience. And a blow dryer. If you can make it through till the end, you will have a beautiful, unique device!

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One thought on “The truth behind DBrand Skins!”

One more thing I have noticed while using skins on smartphones, heat dissipation gets disturbed, phone starts to trap more heat compared to naked device. Specially, more true when you start charging your device with skin , ut heats up at very high levels , it has caused me in the past to damage power circuit of my Android phone, internal damage over a longer period of time, it doesn’t happen immediately but as you start to use the phone every day , it traps more heat then usual and finally over a period of few months it causes some sort of internal damage and even leading to over heating of batteries. It is important to note smartphones back plate acts as radiator and heat sink to disipate the heat generated by internal components and if we cover up this plate it will act more like an insulator and damage the phone components slowly.